


gonna pick you up like a paper cup

by templeofshame



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2014 Era (Phandom), Depression, Introspection, M/M, Saviour Complex, references to Charkieskies, references to vague suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-29 21:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeofshame/pseuds/templeofshame
Summary: Phil has nightmares about not being able to save the people he loves. It's more of a learning process when he's awake.Written for phandomficfests' Shuffle Mode fest; song is "Billy Brown" by Mika.





	gonna pick you up like a paper cup

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for @waveydnp for some top-notch betaing; the kind that's like wow, can you imagine if i had posted without a beta and missed out on that? and thanks to @jestbee for moral support.

It’s a bad day. As long as Phil’s known Dan, there’ve been bad days, days when Phil’s felt this helplessness, and then guilt for thinking about his own feelings when Dan’s in a kind of pain he can never quite grasp. Maybe pain’s not even the word Dan would use, maybe it’s a duller, heavier thing than pain. But they’ve come through so, so many bad days. They know how. 

But then again, Dan knows how to get out of bed, he’s made a video about it, and that doesn’t mean he can do it. Not today. Not a lot of days, lately. So maybe knowing how to get through bad days doesn’t mean it’ll be fine. Phil isn’t sure anymore how scared he should be, when Dan’s embracing the void a bit too much. More than anything, Phil doesn’t know what to do with his fear that helps.

That’s all Phil really wants, to help. To make things a little more okay, to make Dan a little happier each day. Phil’s nightmares aren’t always about Dan, but they’re usually about failing to save people—his friends, his family, falling into pain and darkness because Phil couldn’t save them. When he’s awake, he knows what that’s like too, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on that. The past is past and Dan isn’t anyone else. Phil’s good at helping Dan. 

Or not bad at it, anyway. When Dan was still in uni, Phil couldn’t make him revise, but he was there for Dan through dropping out, telling his family, moving forward with a new set of life plans. In their Manchester flat, they’d come up with The Rules, so Phil had ways to give Dan structure and accountability. Even when Dan was just a sad, lonely boy on the internet — home of so many sad, lonely people — Dan says Phil helped. “Saved,” even, that time on formspring, but definitely helped. Even — well, even before he started trying. 

It’s still surreal to Phil that he’s done that, helped people without trying, without knowing who they are or what they’re up against. And he feels the weight of it, but he also just… loves it. AmazingPhil to the rescue, accidentally saving days and lives while he goofs around online (and these days, makes a living). It makes him feel powerful but honestly, without the corresponding great responsibility. Not for people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have to see the people of the internet suffer through the parts he can’t fix. That’s just Dan. And… and Charlie, back then.

Phil steels himself against the pang of guilt that comes with that thought. At first, he’d thought he could… not fix Charlie, but fix some things _for_ him, make his life easier to handle. Phil thought he could make Charlie happy, make a difference, _matter_. To a cute, sad internet boy, yes, but that’s not… That can’t be why. To someone who didn’t get sick of him, who thought his weird was cool, who wanted to get to know him and also liked his face. It was the least Phil could do, to try to fix some sad. 

And it was Charlie’s choice, ultimately, for it to become less Phil’s problem, for the ambiguity to give way to clear, safe friendship. But Phil tried, he really did, to help Charlie. He didn’t want to give up on him, not the first time he lashed out at Dan or the second. When he clearly needed… something, something Phil couldn’t provide. So he’d still given up in the end, early this year. Mostly, it was giving up the illusion that he could reverse Charlie’s self-destructive spiral. Maybe no one else had, but that didn’t mean it should — or could — fall to him. And that was with professional help.

And Dan just has Phil. Phil knows that’s not true, but it still feels true sometimes. Dan has millions of people who care, but so few who _know_ , who see him when he’s trapped at the bottom of something that feels bottomless. Dan feels alone there, where Phil can’t reach him, and lately, Phil’s not sure if he’s even in hearing range. Today, Dan doesn’t want to watch him play Zelda. He doesn’t want Phil’s help. He wants space, to be left alone. He wants nothingness.

And Phil can’t just get on with his life, not with that knowledge gnawing at the back of his mind. Maybe all he can do is just hope Dan wakes up in a better place, but also, can he? They’re not in denial, but maybe there are pieces they’ve been ignoring, that they’ve been slipping behind furniture in the hopes they won’t have to see them again. The pieces too deep to reach with bubble baths or sleep cycles or keeping busy. 

Dan had said it the other day, in the calm between storms, when it was easier for Phil to hesitate, to doubt, to think there had to be an upswing next. When Phil’s fear of facing everything they’d hidden away felt like it mattered. Like that fear of change and regret and… _defeat_ could compare to this fear. 

“I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

Phil had recoiled from those words: “on my own.” This wasn’t Dan feeling disconnected and alone in his darkness; this was Dan on an okay day. A picking-himself-up day. Not, Phil realized, a Phil-picking-Dan-up day. Because in those words, Dan said that he’s been doing this alone, for three years living together and the years before that, and Phil wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. In that moment, he couldn’t climb out from under that nightmare feeling enough to support Dan either, to be proud of him for facing what Phil’s afraid to, for asking for help beyond what Phil can offer.

Now-Phil wants to throttle that Phil, to shake some sense into him or at least shake out that sense of failure. As if asking for help would somehow be worse than worrying and waiting and seeing new levels of bad day. But at least he’s left Now-Phil with something to do while he worries and waits.

Cautiously, Phil walks to their bedroom. He doesn’t tiptoe; he wants Dan to know he’s there if he’s awake and aware, if that might be a reassuring thought. He pauses outside, looking in. Phil makes himself linger in as much of it as he can feel: his Dan, in their bed, but drained of his energy, his drive, his investment in their life.

Phil’s laptop is sitting on his bedside table. Maybe that’s an excuse, but it’s also true. “Hey,” Phil whispers, as if it’s less intrusive that way. “Can I come sit?” He creaks the door open just wide enough to be a path.

Dan makes a sound just shy of a grunt, but it doesn’t have the sharpness that means “go away,” so Phil slips into the room. Here the intensity of his hopes, his _longings_ , of everything he wants for Dan is in stark contrast to the atmosphere of dull despair. Phil makes his way to his side of the bed, where there’s just enough room to sit without crowding Dan. He’s learned to avoid the comfort he wants to give when Dan doesn’t want to receive it, like today. As Phil settles, Dan doesn’t move towards him, but he doesn’t shrink away. 

“You were right, babe,” Phil whispers, even softer, maybe too soft to hear even across the bed. Phil opens his laptop, and starts to research.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://templeofshame.tumblr.com/post/183855657300/gonna-pick-you-up-like-a-paper-cup-t-12k-phil)?


End file.
